Muse

Rollo, the chocolate treat with caramel inside. Rollo, Rollo, Roll your boat gently in my mouth. Pop, top, check it out. Lick the foil with your tongue. Give it to your friends as a gift. Let's change gears. Rollo, Tony, Brown Town. Check yourself at the door. Give me some more, give me some more, give me some more on your Rollos. That's pretty good. T-B-T-M. Oh, this is my jam right here.

Yeah, most people think I'm on drugs because I'm always happy. Are you on drugs? No, I'm not. I'm high on life.

We may have created a monster in the lab. It's not a monster. It's a cyborg that can kill without remorse. And there's just nothing wrong with listening ever, so listen if you know it's good for you.

Remember, to achieve success, you must first conceive it and believe in it. Remember, impossible is nothing.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

We're getting medium play on three independent radio stations in Central Europe.

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. It's your lucky day. Coming to you once again from beautiful Austin, Texas, where...

Oh, Ma, Pa, it's just beautiful.

Well, you sort of understand why everyone's moving down here to Austin. The weather is nice. The river is beautiful. Boy, it's just a lovely place to be here in the month of January, arriving at episode 3591 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. Lots going on out there in the world, including the world of Twitter, where, noticed, because this is the kind of show where, like, kind of low-key public radio subtweeting rises to the level of a topic that interests us. There's been some kind of medium-key public radio subtweeting going on the last couple of days, which maybe it's just the algorithm that I'm following, but it got my interest and involves the possible talent drain happening at NPR, so we'll probably talk about that. A lot of people, well, going on to other things, leaving NPR.

I'd like to just take this moment to mention

I am available to host any and all national NPR programming although speaking of Twitter I think a cursory look at my tweets would disqualify me like the one I sent from the plane the other day trying to start a national movement that if people are going to wear their masks below their noses I feel it is our civic responsibility to really break some wind I think that might be one of those things where you could modify the behavior by making it so unpleasant to to have the mask below your nose that we could really we could get some people following the rules. So anyway, those are the kind of tweets that will keep me off of the national NPR airwaves. But we will talk about what's been going on there. Also, it's another Andrew W. Wednesday. Where's my bell? It's a Wednesday where Andrew gets the W regarding the film. Don't look up. So who needs a movie? Which we've got some data on and we'll talk about. Plus, maybe we can talk about some of the movies that we saw during the break that we are now day three upon returning to the airwaves. And we still haven't gotten to that. So we'll hit that. Plus some emails and V-mails. Oh, and speaking of Andrew W. Wednesdays, here he is. The man, the myth, the legend, the longest running Cobra of the show. Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. It is a Wednesday, so that means it's... I might have tacos when I go home. I'm not quite sure yet. It's Taco Wednesday for this guy in the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, where he is joining us from right now. Good morning, my friend. Good morning, Luke.

I don't want to start off on the wrong foot today, but we do have to talk because you and I are at odds over something in the cultural landscape here. And, you know, I texted you yesterday. I said, I want to start the show. I want to talk about the ongoing war on oldies. And that's what this is about, Luke. You know my beloved Kixi Radio here in Seattle, Washington.

Are you any closer to purchasing that station?

Not in the moment, but I do feel that it's probably becoming more affordable by the day. Because, you know, that is the station that plays music as cool now as it was then. Stuff from the 50s and 60s. Sometimes they also play Billy Joel because he sounds like he's from the 50s and the 60s. And that's in the front. But that's a story for another day But of course This format This radio format Is not exactly I don't know, slaying in the current 2022 radio market. In fact, radio itself is not slaying these days. I don't know if you heard about this thing called the Internet.

Did you pay zero attention to the audio drops that we started the show with today?

We're getting medium play on three independent radio stations in Central Europe. This show is thriving. It's certainly a different market. But anyway, so Kixi Radio here in town, which, again, mostly plays oldies music, over the past couple of months, I mean, they've broken my heart many times. Am I still loyal to them? Of course I am. I am as loyal as you can get. I have Kixi-branded sticky notes that are so branded with Kixi that it renders the notes almost useless. Have I showed you these things? No. Can that please be the show pick today? Yes, you've got to remind me. I love them They're so useless The only thing they're good for is when I'm time banditing A football game I can stick them along the bottom of the TV And it'll block out what the scores are Across the league In case I'm taping anything Anyway, so they have Kind of taken away more and more of the music programming I think I've told you this They've replaced two of the drive time blocks They've taken away music altogether And put Bloomberg News in there

Can I ask you one quick question about the post-it notes Yeah. Do you think it's because, of course, the reason that a lot of that kind of radio station swag existed 20 years ago was because of how radio ratings were determined. And it was this thing called the Arbitron system. And certain people would get a little booklet in the mail that was blank, and they would be asked to fill in this radio diary. What were you listening to a week ago at 7.30 a.m.? And, of course, no one remembers that kind of stuff. So radio stations would mass-produce, like, keychains and pens and Post-it notes, literally hoping that a person would just be holding a pen that said your radio station name on it when they were trying to remember what they were listening to. It would be hilarious to me if Kixi were still following this plan because that's not how radio station ratings are determined anymore. Now there's something called the Personal People Meter, which who knows if it's that much more accurate but you wear it like a pager and it picks up subaudible tone so if you're walking through a mall and the Cinnabon is playing Kixie I don't know why I decided that was the universe in which we were going to encounter Kixie your little pager would pick up a subaudible tone that's being broadcast on that frequency and Kixie gets credit for it but it would be hilarious and anachronistic and kind of fitting if Kixie was also still trying to get ratings like it was the 60s that would explain a lot of their problems my guess

is these are not new post-it notes I don't want to put anybody on front street because it involves their job but we have a mutual friend who works at the company that owns Kixi now and when she you know when she got the job there and she knows my love of Kixi she grabbed me all the Kixi swag she could is it swag or schwag in this case I always get that wrong honestly I think it's swag

Swag, sealed with a gift. Swag, well, you know what? I don't know, because then you've also just got swag in general, like somebody's feeling kind of swaggy.

Right, and then you have swag, which is what we called bad weed in college.

You think swag is so cool. Well, guess what? It's for boys, and class is for men. This is class.

So I don't know if that clears anything up. Thank you. So I'm holding right now. I have some AM880 Kixi chapstick that I'm holding. That was also in the care package. I just got a whole bunch.

By the way, did I really trying to own the demo of people who have dry skin on their lips?

Did I tell you that I think this was on a different podcast. I honestly don't think we did this on TBTL or maybe we did. My apologies if this is retreading. But I have a remarkable number of radio branded chapsticks in my drawer here. I'm holding a mountain stage chapstick with. Oh, sure. Larry Groce.

Is that how you say that? I'm holding that. My buddy from CBS, I think my buddy from CBS Sunday morning, Connor Knighton guest hosted that show once. That's like out in like Virginia or something, right?

That sounds, that sounds right. I thought I had a third radio chapstick too. I don't, you know, tend to put the radio chapstick to my lips. You know, this raises, okay, I'm still, I'm still pretty far away from the point I'm trying to make. So sorry, everybody. But one quick thing, you mentioned this schwag and we talk about how the economy has been rocked in so many ways by the pandemic. That's another thing. Like just think about the people whose job it is to mass produce stuff like this for like conferences. You know what I mean? We think about, you know, the hit on travel and conferences. And and so, you know, just the travel industry at large and hotels and conference centers. But also, what about the companies who just make tons of keychains?

and things that you get when you go to something like PRPD, right? You just walk around from booth to booth and it's like, hey, here's my radio show or podcast branded on a USB stick or maybe those are day class A now, what with all the cybersecurity training. But whatever little stuff like that, that must be an industry that's hurting now too, right? Absolutely.

I mean, those are the little things you don't think about. You are so right, though, about schwag versus swag. Swag. Swag. Products given away free, typically for promotional purposes. Also, marijuana, typically of low grade. See, there you go. Even potheads couldn't smoke that swag.

Now, what does it say about the brown frown, which is another thing that we would call swag?

So, I have been misdescribing this my whole life because I've always called it swag because when i was a kid sometimes you would get a um you know you'd get maybe if you were lucky and you had a lady friend in say seventh grade you might get a uh a sealed with a kiss a swack or maybe somebody gave you something and they'd say it's sealed with a gift swag swag i didn't know that is that why you although swag is also described as a curtain or piece of fabric fastened so as to hang in a drooping curve um let's see yeah it's really interesting i i think i've been just swag wrong about swag this whole time and that's across the board both as a gift thing and also

just as a lifestyle well also the frustrating thing is you and i will forget this conversation as if we were zapped in the head by one of those men in black things right i guarantee you we will have this conversation again in at the probably 12 months at the early you know you got to be a goldfish luke i heard somebody wise say that one that's it when you're out here playing the corner

you just have to have a short memory you're out on an island and you just have to you have to get right back up and you have to just go right back at it i mean that's the key to podcast exactly

that and also the key to podcasting is you don't want to remember anything that you've talked about on the show before all right so this is a zone podcast so really that's how we're okay so you

and i have to be in constant communication so that i know when i'm handing the listener over

to you so i'm gonna jump back in here and get on with this story so that we can end it and move on with our lives because the truth is this story isn't even really about kicksy radio it's just getting started so i consider i understand especially because we have a friend who works there um i understand that kicksy needs to do whatever it can to remain solvent right it needs to it needs to do something as my friend said we're just trying to bring the average age down from 95 to like a nice solid 70 she says i know that you're doing your part there but like bloomberg news you know like that's not exactly going for the tiktok audience but like but they have you know they've sold off the weekends to like some sort of barbecue show and boating show and life advice show and i'm just like i'm missing my dick clark um and then now the the drive times are news blocks that i feel i can get elsewhere but again listen they're a company they don't owe me anything it's not public radio i don't donate to them they have to make the the programming decisions that they need to make in order to have more than just one listener which i understand although it makes me sad then yesterday i am listening to a sports and culture podcast out of miami florida that i enjoy a great deal i can't think of the name of it off the top of my head and one of the producers mentions that the oldies stations on sirius have gone away now i'm not a serious subscriber right now um but you know every now and then i get a free trial i'm always tempted they're always trying to woo me back i get these envelopes in the mail that say you can get it for just five dollars a month and i always say one of these days i'm gonna i'm gonna join you again serious radio well upon further investigation they didn't kick the oldies stations off of serious and when i say the oldies stations here you're probably familiar luke i'm talking about 50s on five and 60s on six those were great right a lot of position a lot of cousin brucey on there yes before he stepped down a couple of years ago um and those stations have been there i think since probably near the beginning of the satellite radio thing uh you had because you do all the decades right starting i believe with the 50s i don't think they had a 40s on four station but

you have 50s on five 60s on six they had a 10s on 10s on one which was just old piano player music Yes, it is. Just one guy would load that thing in, and then it would go, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

We had the megaphone channel, too, where people just sang through acoustic megaphones. I love that one. But anyway, turns out they haven't totally killed those stations, but they have bumped them way back in the lineup, right? So if you turn on your satellite radio and you start at the beginning and you start flipping through, you're going to get to station five, and it's not going to be the 50s anymore. You have to go all the way. Because that's prime real estate. That's prime real estate. but you have to go all the way to channel 71 to hear 50s music. now. It's something like, they're calling it 50s on 71. No, they're calling it like the golden 50s, and then the golden 60s, or whatever they're calling it, is on channel 73. Or maybe it's 72 and 73. It doesn't really matter. But again, okay, it's still there. I'm glad to know that they haven't been completely banished, but it's not, it doesn't fill me with joy, knowing that this thing that I love is getting pushed further and further into the corners of our cultural memory but here's where it puts you and i at odds luke there is a dazzling detail to this story that came up later which is apparently one of these prime real estate stations in which my beloved

oldies got bumped off of is now home to tiktok music oh andrew yeah you couldn't have known how culturally divided we are on this because can I tell you something I was I you know I listened to the Stern show a lot on that channel and actually you know you know where I heard the ad for this it was on Sirius but I was listening to some kind of play-by-play the thing that I like about that that network that we receive no money from and that is in fact direct competition for our listeners dollars Andrew so we should probably not hype it too much but it is pretty useful for listening to play-by-play when you're out of market so they get they have all the football games on there all of the baseball games etc the problem is they don't have any ads they they don't have the rights or they don't want to play the ads so i listen to a lot of cleveland browns football on there and they'll you know and then they'll go to break and then instead of playing the ads that are airing if you were listening in cleveland on the radio feed there's nothing they do these like very annoying like this day in sports history and other things that are just on constant loop But sometimes they'll play ads for other things that are on the network And the other day they said, these are all TikTok jams And I thought, I am going to listen to that station I have had the thought, Andrew, that that's the kind of program that I want to hear

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm And, you know, I understand time moves on But is there anything, and I'm looking for confirmation here Because I'm trying to figure out if I read or heard that detail About the TikTok station taking over one of these slots I mean, Sirius definitely has a TikTok radio station now, obviously Right now they're playing Ya Boodoo Ebat. Do we know this? Can I even play this live without a membership? No, I don't think I can dip in on this.

I don't know that song by name, but my guess is about 80% of the songs that are playing on that station, if you were to play them for me, I'd be like, oh, yeah, yeah. And that's the one where a person is putting their finger up, and then they're taking one down if they've done this or that. Like, I find those songs so earwormy. I am wandering around most of the day now saying to myself, go little rock star, which is not even a TikTok meme that I enjoy, Andrew. It's mostly people just kind of gassing themselves up or their partners where they're like, my parents were crappy to me. But now I have my own apartment. And then it's like, go little rock star. It's like not even a way of describing the world that really speaks to me. But those little words in that order are now burned into my brain. So I know that this TikTok station would really be for me. Do you know this?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Voodoo. Totally. Now what I'm doing is I'm seeing what's playing on the Sirius radio, and then I'm looking up the songs on YouTube, and that's how I'm playing that for you. Oh, yeah, that song is huge.

I'm trying to think of what people are generally doing when that song is playing. That part I can't quite put together, but I know that song very well from TikTok.

Absolutely. I'm looking in the comments to see if I have any clues for you, but I do not. So anyway, that's where the war on oldies is. Just more banishment and being replaced by the newest, freshest thing. I mean, they couldn't have replaced it with, like, baby steps. Like, I don't know, replace it with a 90s station or something. Right. I don't know. That's what I was going to say.

That's an aggressive pivot. Yeah, it really is, huh? Like, I'm trying to think of, like, that's like taking a Carnegie library. Do you go Carnegie or Carnegie? I go Carnegie, I think. I think it's Carnegie but I think we all grew up if you're our age hearing it as Carnegie and so it's just like Carnegie Hall we've decided thank you for you know building all these libraries around the country and donating to public radio but we're going to say your last name is pronounced Carnegie or Carnegie not Carnegie but it'd be like taking I'm trying to think of a very classic building I love those those Carnegie libraries that are in lots different places in the country Including a lot of them in Seattle They're just beautiful classic buildings It's like a Carnegie library And then they empty it out And you go there one day And it's like a What would be What's like one of the more nouveau It's boba tea or something You know what's like What's a thing that's very much of our

moment that it's an escape room it goes from being a carnegie library to an escape room or

something yeah definitely or or it goes from being your favorite bookstore to a vape shop do you know this song oh i mean come on andrew you've been this embarrassed all of us roses a classic iman beck by saint john you're making a strong case for me to start listening to this tiktok music station okay you know what i gotta i gotta find some rag time on this thing why did i really there i just earned us the explicit i'm gonna stop doing that's the third we've been back for three days and i've had to drop an f-bomb all three days that one was absolutely useless my apologies maybe i'll beep it well but you're dealing with a lot because

you're seeing a way of life emotionally a way of life is coming to a close the way of i mean i don't look i'm not trying to say this to sound like i'm trying to make fun of of kicksy or of your of your oldies listening ways because i certainly love a lot of those songs but i'm i am really like you i think are an outlier because you're relatively young probably to be as into that radio station as you are but is it at this point is their listenership just people who put it on kick see at an auto mechanic shop 25 years ago and no one's the shop's actually been closed but it's still standing and that's the shop is at chipotle the radio is down in the pit they dug out to create underground parking for a bar studio pure bar studio but down there somewhere is just a radio that's still getting the frequency however so faintly like i do feel like kicksy's big thing is someone put this on 40 years ago i'm trying to figure out this is

supposed to be what's on kicksy right now that doesn't sound like my kicksy what is this feedback What is this? What's that about to become? Oh. Delwamsley? Who's Delwamsley? I have no idea. Oh, it's 10 o'clock. Maybe they're wrapping up their morning talk situation. Got it. But again, several months ago, I would have just pulled up Kixi Radio. I would have been hearing Frank Sinatra sing. It was a very good year. I say that because, not that I'm a Sinatra fan. And I'm actually not that big of a Sinatra guy. But for some reason, the Kixi website is so janky that during the talk broadcasting, it's still just scrolling through some alternate universe playlist where it's kind of like this is what we would be playing right now, I guess, if we hadn't signed everything over to Bloomberg. I'm not joking. Like right now it says now playing. It was a very good year. But instead it was Del Wamsley's guitar solo.

I am very, very curious about what the Del Wamsley show sounds like. Just based on that riff, I've got a lot of theories. It sounds like they're trying to keep the talk hot.

It does feel like that's not cool talk.

No, that's not. That's like, sorry if this is a little too loud for your opinion. Like, it's amazing, and I could be wrong. It's amazing, though, how my mind can write an entire scenario around that. I don't even know what Del Wamsley's voice sounds like. I know that that was the thing at the end of the show, and I've got a lot of theories.

There was a solid power out, I believe, before we heard that feedback. I'm looking at the Del Wamsley radio show podcast. So actually, is it more life advice than I thought? I thought it was going to be hot takes on cultural issues, But it looks like this is more like kind of lifestyle advice, right? And life balance. Oh, real estate.

I have a real affection. I mean, I don't know what the content of that show is like. But I do have some affection or at least some empathy. What's the one when I've actually experienced it? That'd be empathy, I believe. I feel like I have some empathy for people that are still grinding it out, trying to do nationally syndicated talk shows on the radio. Because it is just I mean this Kixi conversation I think Just sort of indicates that But it is such a tough world out there I mean there's like a handful of shows There's probably like five or six shows It's probably Unfortunately it's this guy That got Rush's old time slot It's you know some conservative hosts Probably like Dr. Laura is that still a thing And like a few others But then maybe Michael Medved Who's a conservative host but the the world of like trying to make it as the del womsley show like we got kicksy i mean i guess they're getting a lot of free publicity here but there's the world the world of radio has changed so much that's why this is a podcast not a radio show that's why your buddies in south florida aren't on radio stations anymore they're doing podcasts it's just it's such a different world in terms of how people get this kind of content and then you just eventually you it's like Thank you.

you know i don't know if this is real or not but like supposedly the last japanese soldiers that were still fighting on certain islands in the south pacific years after the war was over because no one told them it's like there's just a del wamsley out there just trying to you know and again it might be a great show and it might be more popular than i think it is but that just for some reason took me back to that world of talkers magazine and these shows that are that are just you know trying to get on as many stations as possible now the public radio world was a little different. I happen to host a show that's on nationally on a public radio network, which is, I mean, there's still a framework there, thankfully, which is of great benefit to me. Like, I don't think I would be able to compete out there in the world of AM talk radio, but public radio is still a little bit more old school that, you know, you've got stations and they're gatekeepers and they like to put shows on and my show is one of them. So that's cool. But I don't know, something about that guitar lick and then just thinking about old Del Wamsley trying to do his thing on kick siege took me back like 20 years ago when i was at kvi thinking someday

i'll be a michael medved and i'm sure you already got here too i want to make clear i i made it sound like uh del wamsley is interested in kind of lifestyle stuff it seems like very much financial based it looks like he's got a real estate background oh he's a dave ramsey type

yes i wonder if yep i i wonder if the rule is your first name has to be monosyllabic and your Last name, bisyllabic. Dave Ramsey, Del Wamsley, Bruce Williams.

That's kind of similar. He used to go by Delaware. He shortened it. All right. Now, here's the last thing I'm going to try to do here. It's going to fail, I'm sure, because I'm looking at the Kixie Rundown now, in case you're curious, and then we should really move on. I think we're going to be talking about public radio a little bit later, too. But starting at 7 o'clock in the morning, you have two hours of Bloomberg Radio. That takes you right up to 9. I thought then we go into music. But no, then we have an hour of Del Walmsley. So the first three hours of the day, assuming you're not waking up before seven, is is going to be some sort of talk radio. Then you finally get to the music. In this case, it's it's branded as the John Tesh show, which runs from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. And that's where they're spinning. And I believe that they are still choosing these playlists locally. They're spinning the oldies music. And then John Tesh will take a moment to leave parlor and come over and give you some intelligence for your life. and then that's it five hours of that do you remember when he left he left twitter he he like tweeted out that boilerplate i'm done with this why did he do that i don't know it really changes

my positive energy towards tash um and then that that one kind of bummed me out yeah exactly but

only five hours and then it's 3 p.m suddenly i mean from it's 10 a.m you're grooving along and then suddenly before you know it it's 3 p.m and you're back to bloomberg radio and then finally at eight o'clock you go to when radio was which is actually a really good show that plays um some new and some old radio dramas but let's just try this really quickly let's see if we've made it if we've swept past the top hour news and commercials and will kick see give us any music here no they will not no they will not we'll check intelligence for your life you know if we can just talk radio

programatics for a quick moment please that's an interesting strategy they're doing because the one thing that they've learned in the world of public radio and then we should take a break and come back and talk about the world of public radio is it's it's a lot of public radio stations used to play you know like bluegrass for three hours um monday through friday was the bluegrass show and why because somebody who liked bluegrass in that particular town in the 1980s early 80s was like hey i'd love to do a bluegrass show and the person in charge of the station said that'd be cool but the problem is then you've got the news products that are coming in things like all things considered morning edition talk of the nation or whatever what that used to exist and going from music to talking is a hard is a hard um transition for people because somebody who is enjoying the music all of a sudden now they're hearing talking and somebody who's enjoying the talking then at some point they're hearing music and the idea is you're not supposed to break up your audience so the public radio stations that have really prospered have been the ones that have gotten rid of the like bluegrass shows that were airing you know Monday through Friday because

they wanted to be consistent that's the direction they're going and that's the direction most public radio went as well which is why I find this all concerning because the Kixi radio is never going to go back it's never going to start seeding those hours back to music right like we're on a roll

here towards more Del Walmsley well all joking aside what are the chances of you getting a show on Kixi that seamlessly blends insightful talk radio with the greatest music of the 50s and 60s?

The Andrew Walmsley show. The dream of us buying actual, actually buying the radio station remains a dream, although I have lobbied some of our public radio luminary friends. You've been on some of them. I'm trying to get Bean to buy it with me when I say... With me, I mean use his money. Other friends in the local public radio market, I've been like, well, you know, you're retired now. Maybe we should think about going in on Kixi together. You know what, Andrew? This could be our pasta, okay?

Our friend Dan Pashman from The Sportful, he had one whale of a 2021. He went out and he made, I think it's called Cascatelli, I think is the name he came up for it. he invented his own shape of pasta he documented it on the Sporkful we had him on talking about it a little bit every best of top 10 podcast list that I saw this year put the Sporkful on it because of the narrative around this Cascatelli he's also selling massive amounts of pasta, like he's become a pasta baron at this point they can't even keep it on the shelves or make it fast enough he's already being approached for his next you know pasta project we need a narrative and ours is we're gonna buy kicksy and we're gonna make it an unlikely hit we got to get our own version of cascatelli well i would

love to buy the station but here's something you should know and this is what i was going to say like i've always considered that to be they signed dale wamsley to a 20-year contract we now own Walmsley. No, I you can buy chunks of programming on Kixi and Veeves and I have had not super serious conversations, but not completely unserious conversations about buying somewhere

between it's happening. And when I told Vanessa that I bought a bowling alley. So somewhere

between. Yes, we've talked about it seriously, but yes, we were always drunk when we have these conversations but um like it is affordable like you could like not in ideal time slots but vives and i have talked about whether or not like for one month by like a slate of shows that air i can't remember if it's late at night or early in the morning where the affordable stuff is maybe both and maybe doing a version of all of of after these messages that we could just put on the radio we have talked about that because it's kind of like why not for a few hundred dollars just be on the radio i mean i'm sure that there are some i mean there there's still some things that the station would need to i'm sure um you know i don't know if anybody can just buy it there must be some standards right because they would risk their oh i think you'd be surprised if somebody

just went on there and started swearing camaro about some of the things that go on it sounds like it's a pretty wild west out there but i'm saying i want it to be more like uhf by the station yes by the station and then program all of it and then the the story is these couple of young upstarts which is not you and me we're gonna hire some right it's gonna hire we're gonna hire addy and nick jaron um a couple of young upstarts by this defunct thing this am frequency that nobody thinks has any real value left to it and somehow through creative programming decisions and thinking outside the box, Andrew, also in purchasing a lot of keychains and post-it notes. Resurrect this thing. I mean, this story is waiting to be written

because it's so counterintuitive. By the way, do you know that the company that owns Kixi Radio is actually, it's a relatively small, I think still family-run radio conglomerates, the wrong word, their radio company that is based in, I believe, St. Paul, Minnesota. Is it that's not um i believe it's hubbard i don't have it in front of me oh hubbard sure i'm pretty sure that's a saint paul minnesota company and again i'm pretty sure that it's relatively small when you talk about like kind of the radio landscape i think they own they own a few other stations here in seattle and a few sprinkled around the the country but we're not talking about like clear channel or whatever that's called now i can't decide if it's better or worse for the

narrative i think it's better for the narrative it's as massive if it's owned by you know if we

Take it over Viacom we liberate it right but then it starts going well and then they try to take it back it's also it's sort of like it's shades of Major League meets Tommy Boy meets well UHF you nailed it with UHF I'm trying to think of the name of the old angry guy who's like the the antagonist in UHF can you picture him he's like the he's like the poor man's Ted Knight he's in like a lot of those 80s movies playing like an uptight angry older white guy man i would if you describe that person i would have said you

were talking about ted knight but you're saying this is when you can't get ted knight for your film yeah you get this guy i think i know i can picture his face but i probably don't know his name let's do this let's take a break come back uh we'll figure out who that person is and then we'll um we'll actually get to the real the real heart of this show which again is us talking about uh public radio and commercial radio so stay with emo phillips oh sorry

Thank you. Oh, call me Mr. Butterfingers. Sorry. I remember being shocked by that scene. Like, because I didn't see a lot of movies where there was, I mean, it's gore that's played for comic effect. But I didn't see a lot of movies that were gory. So Emo Phillips cutting his fingers off as he was like, you know, doing his show that was about like a shop class or whatever. I remember being genuinely kind of upset by the amount of blood that was happening in that film.

I forgot about that. I just saw that not all that long ago. Sorry, I talked over your power out. So here we are. Power out.

All right, let's thank our donors of the day. This is why we will never be replaced by Dale Walmsley on this program, Andrew, because of the financial support of people like Christopher Anderson. in Everett, Washington. We could buy whatever's left of KRKO up there.

Oh, okay. I thought you were going to tell me that Dale... Do we know for sure that Dale Wamsley is not one of the donors today?

I should read to the end of this list. You really should. He is. He's the fourth donor. Oh, no. I'm sorry, Dale. But thank you, Christopher. Also, thanks to Neil Hodges in Seattle, Washington for a donation each month to keep this thing going. Also, thanks to Greg and Rachel Smith of Oakland, California The Smiths of Oakland If you bump into anyone in Oakland their last name is Smith, it's probably the same people Give them a hug. Just hug them Hug first, ask questions later That is going to be the motto of our new radio station Kixi Seattle Hug first, ask questions later William Richard is in Mountlake Terrace, Washington and is keeping TBTL going as well. Thank you, William. Thanks to Scott Hartley in Oxford, Ohio. Oh, twist ending there. Is that where Ohio University is? No, that's Miami of Ohio University. Oh, is Miami in Oxford? No, it's probably. Is there such a place as Miami, Ohio, or is it Miami University of Ohio in Oxford?

I don't know the town that Miami University is in, I'll be honest with you, but I do know that the Ohio State, Ohio State University is in Columbus, and OU Ohio University is in Athens.

Oh, okay.

I believe my friend went there, and he called it the Harvard on the Hawking. Miami University.

In Oxford? Look at you. Yeah, it's another Burbank W Wednesday, my friend. Nice. Kristen Cullen is in Redmond, Washington. Thank you, Kristen, for supporting the show. So that name is of note to me today, Andrew, because, of course, I'm down here in Texas because yesterday I was interviewing Kirsten Dunst. And you know how on the show I have said sort of jokingly that it can be confusing because there's a lot of different. There's a there's Kirsten. There's Kristen. There's maybe it's just those two. But I feel like those names are very easily confused. There's Kirstie. And I've I've said and again, hopefully, you know, this has been interpreted in the spirit in which it's intended. but i've said like can we just get everyone with that name kind of on the same page everyone who has these little slight variations of that name because it's it's confusing for the rest of us and i don't want to say i don't want to say the wrong name to someone and so i'm sitting there about to start interviewing kirsten dunst yesterday we're in this like hotel suite and she was lovely by the way just absolutely charming as could be and very down to earth And very not like a movie star person Which I appreciated But I said something because you know this movie that she's in The Power of the Dog Have you seen that yet by the way? No I haven't That's on streaming now? Yeah it's on Netflix It's a very, I mean it's Jane Campion right? So it's very quiet And it's very It's a very subtle film So you just sort of got to be in the mood for that And you got to go in with that expectation I guess But And I was saying to her, in the movie, she actually plays a character who's married to the person that she's actually married to in real life, the actor Jesse Plemons, who is in that Charlie Kaufman film, I'm Thinking About Leaving. He was in Friday Night Lights. He's been in a bunch of things. He actually seems to be really having a moment where everywhere you look, you see Jesse Plemons in things. But anyway, they're married in real life. And, of course, I know that because that's a big part of the story is that they play husband and wife in the film, and they're also married. And I was just making small talk with her as they were setting up the lights, and I said, I was watching some interviews, some junkets that you and Jesse did, and I thought it was actually very charming how you both, your sort of interactions, I was like, your dynamic together is very charming to me. she sort of looked at me and she goes you know we're married right I was like yes I know you're married I was just commenting in the way I would say maybe Andrew like oh it was really cute how you and Genevieve were interacting you know at Teddy's or something like I just thought they had a charming rapport and she goes oh she was I thought you're gonna come in here and be like we're interviewing Kristen Dunst and so she was citing people calling her Kristen as a thing that people who don't know who she is or who are bad at interviewing her do and this was notable to me because i had said i have one goal in this interview and that is to never accidentally call her kristin right yeah so if when this hits tv on sunday if you ever see me saying her name

you'll see my face going to an odd almost rictus where i'm like talking to kirsten i was so worried about botching her name and then right away she indicated to me that that would have been the worst thing i could do so for once my fears were very well founded and that comment that she made

was before you did the interview so it was even more prominent on your mind like don't mess this up don't fall off by the way when when she and her husband were on this junket uh they weren't talking about potentially buying some radio time on kicksy were they um not the part that i watched

but honestly i was sort of just going through a bunch of different research clips so it could have been in a different part of the interview because me and v sort of as far as charming

couples go with um good chemistry we're kind of playing in that sort of your that's your space

exactly they just said they were going to buy some time on the weekends to um i don't like this to do their they also do a show about television advertisement oh my gosh what was the i saw a commercial yesterday that i almost texted you over because i was like this is also very good after these messages content but anyway um more more critically let me just say this thank you to all of our donors of the day for making tbtl possible hello and welcome to top story but before that let's talk about the bad guy from uhf who is this dude so the guy and i you know i think i

even looked this up recently and had already forgotten it it's kevin mccarthy who is kind of famous as a much younger actor for being in invasion of the body snatchers um and then he as he got older he did play this kind of like again often kind of cranky antagonist to like meddling young kids or something he was always in a suit yeah he was always really always the boss he was you know and he plays that that character in UHF but the interesting thing that I realized as soon as I saw this as Kevin McCarthy is there's a bit of a personal angle here because Genevieve once walked in on Kevin McCarthy's son taking a poop um excuse me yeah no that's it that's that's uh I'll tell you the details some other time. No, true story. Let's talk about public radio. True story. We were visiting our friend's aunt in some sort of like beautiful remote estate on coastal Maine. This is going back, God, more than 15 years now. I can't believe how time marches on. This is probably like, I don't know, between 15 and 20 years ago. And we had some very, very close friends in New Hampshire, and they had an aunt who just has, she was very wealthy.

Would you say it was anywhere near Hyannis, Barnstable, Massachusetts? Oh, you said it was in Maine.

Yeah, this was in remote Maine. And it was, I mean, this would have been, Luke, this would have been, this is like your dream. You would have visited this place. I didn't know you then, but you would have visited this place and you would have just found a way to like somehow steal this woman's life. Like she's she's a woman who at the time was probably in her maybe, let's say, late 50s, early 60s, kind of maybe kind of an early retirement, although I don't know that she ever had a traditional job. She is kind of an artist and she had this just beautiful, large, like kind of cabin esque place right on the coast with lobster traps. Right. Like right outside the door. And then also like several like we Genevieve and I had this little outbuilding to ourselves with like kind of almost quasi outside shower. Just like one of those things that is somehow both like kind of rugged and rural, but also just there's so much taste there. Idyllic. You're describing something that is idyllic. Just absolutely beautiful. And we were there, and apparently she is friends with Kevin McCarthy's son, who at this point, I would, Veeves and I are probably in our 20s, maybe our late 20s at this point, maybe early 30s. Kevin McCarthy is probably maybe in his 40s, or I'm sorry, Kevin McCarthy's son, who I don't know his name right now.

Are you talking about Flip McCarthy, James Kevin McCarthy, Patrick McCarthy?

I think I'd remember if it was Flip. I don't know. I need to run that by Genevieve later. But either way, we were in the main house. It was she had him over and maybe a couple of other people for dinner. And then and I think this is OK to tell the story. It's too late now. But Genevieve, after dinner at some point, had. to use the restroom and wanted to find a private place so she went upstairs in this in this in the main house which is not a place we were staying but she thought this way i'll just use this out of the way place but it turns out kevin mccarthy's son had the same idea and genevieve walked in and all i remember is her coming back downstairs with just her face was just i mean that's what the definition of a ghast her eyes were large she was yeah and then we all had to just hang out the rest of the night and um genevieve just felt very very awkward about the whole thing

have you come up with a good i feel like that happens less and less in my life and in adulthood maybe this has to do with door technology or um you know all gender bathrooms that have locks or i don't know i feel like having someone opening a door on me while i was going number two was a very big part of my childhood and a hugely embarrassing thing and i just feel like that hasn't happened to me in forever like something what i was going to ask you is if you have a go-to you know i think on this show just a minute ron got a little bit of attention as a way to explain to someone you're using the restroom but i mean there's nothing more embarrassing than that moment when you're doing what you got to do and that door starts opening and none of us have a good go-to phrase like that should be in the

lexicon um i feel like when i was a kid i would just yell i'm in here i think by the way one quick just kind of theory although it's not super interesting is a couple of things it happened to you a lot as a kid probably because you were one of many kids and maybe even so maybe in your own house that's part of it it's just kind of a chaotic thing I also think that like when you are a family that just has a lot of young people or even just like you know just young kids around even if it's not a lot of them I just feel like maybe the the boundaries are blurred when you're a kid because when you're a really little kid you need help in the bathroom right then you get to a certain age where you don't need help anymore but it's only been a month since you did you know what i mean like i just could sort of see like boundaries being looser everything being looser in that um bowels being looser boundaries being looser exactly that's what i was thinking um uh you know in those situations and now you're an adult i also by the way i would love i i i'm not a super talented person i can't join a lot of competitions but i guarantee you if they had a competition for slow opening bathroom doors I would win that every time and making noise like you should see me if I'm ever at somebody's house and like this is a bad move by the way if you're you know having a party or a group of people over and your policy is just to keep your bathroom door closed most of the time even when it's not in there no recipe you got to leave that open but sometimes I just feel like I am in some situation or like you say if it's if it's a public restroom but I know it's like I can have a single-use restroom and anybody can go in there i'll uh you know i will luke i will knock i will slowly try the handle i will i will open that door socially i will see is there light cracking out i will listen i mean i am like i am like a i am like a hunter i am like some sort like all of my instincts come out my ears go back i get down on my hands and knees and i listen to the railroad tracks to hear if anybody is coming out of the restroom before i open that door it takes me 15 minutes to open a bathroom door these days you've had an accident by the time that you open that door yeah you know what it's an accident of

respect that's right i think you're right though i think because i was one of seven kids and we had one bathroom and my parents were very anti doors that locked from the inside that was a whole thing no one had none of us had doors that we could lock like the bathroom door didn't have a i was jealous of people who just had that little silly even like you know that little hook thing that

you could just you like to close a screen oh yeah yeah yeah even that anything that provided even

yeah yeah just a teeny bit of resistance we my parents were very anti all of that so i think there was a lot of walking in happening also we were in a lot of like church things where it'd be like you'd go to the nabikowskis for bible study and there would also be one bathroom and a lot of people of different ages and like you said as a kid you sort of don't have as probably as much body autonomy as or you know you're like people don't think it's weird to open the door on a three-year-old who's using the bathroom or i don't know what age kids get potty trained but let's say you're five you sort of don't people aren't like respecting your boundaries the way they probably should because they're like you're five you might be having a situation you know so it's just a lot of that but i also feel like it's happened to less maybe again because i now live alone in my own apartment with a bathroom i'm just not getting walked in on as much but i i just know there's never anything where i felt less in control of my voice than when i'm going in here right what

you got to do is use me i think that i think what we should commit to is if we are ever i guess we'll say the victim in this situation i guess we just have to commit

to looking the person straight in the eye not breaking eye contact and just saying splooch this is an obvious question here um and i think that we've even talked about it before so my apologies but if you're in let's say this situation because this is like a you know i remember one time i was i think i was peeing in a bathroom i didn't um lock the door behind me and a young woman like walk you know like younger than me but this is like i don't know in the past five years or so um kind of walked in then closed the door quickly but like you know my back was to her it wasn't like a completely hugely embarrassing situation it wasn't great but it wasn't it wasn't the worst i wasn't there there's no eye contact there was not much to see um i wasn't sitting on the toilet etc etc it wasn't like the most vulnerable but i do think that this this situation you have stopped pulling your pants all the way down

to your ankles right when you do when you know i go number one shirt tails shirt tails and then

bare legs popping on the bottom um but this situation where you're actually at a dinner party actually kind of hanging out with some quasi fancy people and now you have a few hours to have coffee and wine with these folks after walking in on somebody going to the bathroom um which would you rather be the person who opens the door or the person who is on the toilet i think it's probably an obvious question though that is a tough one actually because i feel like i think i would rather be the walker inner really oh it's not an obvious question okay

i'm the opposite because to be the person who's sitting on the toilet with your pants down is a that's a vulnerability oh it is that's very vulnerable and even if it's not your fault Even if you shut the door, even if you hung a sign outside that said occupado, even if you're in the quote unquote right, you are also the person who has been laid bare. And the other person maybe, you know, should have knocked louder or something, but they weren't with their. I just think there's a vulnerable factor to being the person sitting there with your pants down that I would feel more embarrassed around than being the person who opened the door.

Yes. And, you know, me, I'm so extremely shy. I don't you know what I mean, especially around my body like that. what you say makes obviously a lot of sense but at least i didn't do it you know what i mean like i just the idea of it right your embarrassment around committing the faux pas is stronger than

your embarrassment around someone seeing you in a vulnerable position because i feel like then

like if i'm the genevieve in this scenario not only is it awkward the rest of the night but i'm the one who did something that i shouldn't have done now i guess it would maybe change a little bit if there was a lock on the door and I chose I chose or didn't realize that I wasn't using it then it does it sort of does be if there's a lock on the door it kind of does become the fault of the person using the bathroom I think you should if there's a lock you use the lock in that situation but I do feel like if if I had to spend the night with you know not spend the night but spend the evening with a group of friends and one of us walked in on the other I would rather be the person who was again quote-unquote the victim in this situation because it would be doubly worse to have that awkwardness but also know that I was the dingus this is an incredibly low-stakes

version of Knives Out I still haven't seen that that movie I haven't either but I think I have a sense of what it is it's a bunch of people in a location where some something's going down yeah

yeah I assume yeah some sort of almost like a clue like sort of closed box mystery yeah okay

Speaking of films, let's see if we can just power through as many of these top stories as possible. We don't have to dilly-dally too much. But first of all, if I had my bell here – actually, I do have my bell. Congratulations. Your theory on Don't Look Up and if it would have kind of broad appeal as a film that's definitely designed to make people think about climate change differently, your theory about that was absolutely right, Andrew. 152 million hours of don't look up were streamed in its debut week which made it the biggest week

in the history of netflix which is really something yeah i mean listen not to not to take it away one thing that i always like to just point out and caveat though is netflix numbers we totally have to trust netflix on this there's no transparency with that with that company which really kind of drives me crazy it's not like you mentioned earlier luke the nielsen ratings or the Arbitron ratings of old where you have this third party who's looking at all the various stations numbers like this is Netflix can release whatever it wants to release and it can also it can also shape those stats in a way that it can get a headline out on and again I'm not saying that this isn't worth talking about but I do just think that that's an important caveat in this day and age everybody's writing their own

Everybody's writing their own news these days. But having said that, I also think that, listen, the reason I suddenly like that decided I wanted to watch this comet movie, which I'd seen one commercial for, and I thought it looked really funny and like it had a really good cast. But I thought it was in theaters. but then over the holiday I just saw little bits and pieces on Twitter that was kind of like coming from weird accounts like one of my Browns accounts whoever runs this brown vintage Browns account or whatever tweeted out like I don't care what your policies are this was a great movie or something and then our friend Nihar had tweeted something nobody cares about your opinions I love him he's like nobody cares about your opinions on this movie or something and then he made it a joke by saying and nobody cares about my opinions on your opinions on this movie. And I was like, something is going on here, and I don't know what it is, and I want to watch this movie before I jump into the dialogue about the movie. And I think that I was, while I was cooking breakfast that day, I saw some tweet about it, and I was like, I better figure out what's going on here before it's kind of spoiled for me. And so I also think that because Adam McKay and David Sirosa, what is the name of the journalist who we co-wrote it with?

Oh, David Sirota, who we used to have on Ross and Burbank.

he's he's a and we used to have him on the la show quite a bit to press play and he's a great

yeah i was shocked when i saw his name in the credits i mean i don't know why i was but only because we have you know he was a fairly frequent talk radio guest and obviously a really bright person but then he and adam mckay have obviously teamed up on this yeah um and you know i think

that you know it makes sense adam mckay as he's making these movies is getting more and more like kind of deliberately i don't want to use the word political because i think that's incorrect But, you know, the movies that he's telling, even from like the other guys, which was about the financial collapse, even though it was, you know, just pretty much kind of a goofy buddy comedy, like he's trying to take on real world issues. So partnering up with a journalist for the screenplay is very interesting. But all that is to say that, like, both of those guys have sort of like been dragged in social media because they're responding to the haters and then people don't like their responses and whatever. And it's all like, you know, none of it is like super gross or super angry, but it's it was enough to like just stir up the water. And I feel like even if there's if they're slapping back and people are slapping back at them, they're just creating more and more intrigue about, well, what is this thing that everybody's talking about? And so that drove you to watch that drove me to watch. And I have a feeling that I'm not the only one like people are like, well, you know, one way or the other, I should see this thing. And I do think that, again, with the cast and the sort of the way this story is framed, and it is just a funny movie. Oh, you know what we didn't mention when we were talking about performances? I loved Tyler Perry in this. Like, I have not seen it. It makes me want to go watch some of those Tyler Perry movies, like, where he plays all kinds of characters. Like, I have just not watched any Tyler Perry, but, like, I found him to be really charming in this. And I do not want to spoil it, but you'll know what I'm talking about, Luke. There is an ongoing joke that has nothing to do with the main mission of this movie. Just a joke about snacks that keeps coming back that it just slayed me every time they surprised me with this joke.

How about Timothee Chalamet when they're buying basically this sort of dinner that they're going to make? I mean I will if this was a written line I will I will nominate whoever wrote that movie for an Oscar or if it was improv by Chalamet it's also incredible they're getting some fingerling potatoes the excitement his character has for fingerling potatoes

yeah somebody says get some of those go get some of those potatoes those kind of small ones what do you call those small ones and somebody says fingerling and he's just like I love fingerling potatoes And I think that's kind of that snap

That snap with your hand like you do If you were trying to like pack a tin Of dip in the 80s When people still did that It's just like a beautiful moment

Just great performances so yeah

To me though like I mean I am hoping that of those and again You're right we're believing Netflix And you're right about this too Andrew You pointed this out before that Netflix is very cagey or they're very Effective at like getting more Attention for their thing by announcing How popular their thing is Which is then a story Because then we talk about Oh Tiger King is getting All these views And then that's just Free media for Netflix Or Nitflix As the place I'm starting Is going to be called

That's what I call my gym Nitflex

And it's just like Me and a bunch of weaklings Go there and we flex But if the 152 streaming hours Whatever If that's to be believed My hope is that You and I are like Two of the hours And the whole rest of it Is people who are Climate change skeptics Yeah I don't know if that's I don't know how likely that is i don't know if they just got everyone who's already in the bag for like i don't understand what that number means like is it a number that indicates it would have to by definition include people that are like climate deniers or are there enough of us science believers out there that we could together watch 152 million hours of this like i want to know if this is actually penetrating the brains of people who think that climate change is somehow a hoax

made up by AOC now the important thing when looking at these numbers is um again not to take all the fun out of this but I did watch it twice once by myself and once with Genevieve so that so you and

I have three hours as well yeah it's an hour and a half so you're about did they mention three hours I'm an hour and a four and a half hours is us uh-huh they didn't mention that any of that in the press release I assume I didn't read the press release I saw this in the Hollywood Reporter so it's already been filtered I see okay but I hope they did just for you know truth and yeah reporting Speaking of movies I just want to say this So we can get it off the list Licorice Pizza is really good I really want to see that Would recommend

And I want Is that one that is like Because a lot of movies these days Are released Sorry Learning verbs But a lot of movies are released now Both streaming and in the movies In the movie theaters And I am I love going to the theater So like I was kind of bummed When I saw that Don't Look Up wasn't in theaters So I was like Okay well if I don't have that option Then I'll stream it now But I really want to see Licorice Pizza in the theater.

You know how Addy and I saw it on Christmas Day in 70 millimeter at the Hollywood Theater in Portland? I didn't even realize. You'd think as a Portland resident I would know this kind of stuff. But the Hollywood Theater in Portland is one of, I think, a pretty short list of theaters left in America that will play 70 millimeter prints. And I'm not enough of a synast to really tell you what that means. So we just wanted to see that movie. It was on Christmas Day. this is where it was playing and we show up and it's like this rounded very cool rounded screen probably Cinerama had one in Seattle before that place went dark but Andrew it was the most movie-ish movie I have seen in forever first of all it's set in that era like the way it's lit you would just love the lighting of this film the film I mean it looks to me like it had to be shot on film but it was probably shot digitally and then processed but it just feels for all the world sort of like a certain era of film and then I'm watching it in this cool theater that I didn't even realize was going to be part of the experience also I had had like the exact right number of drinks before we went and got some like sushi and had a couple beers so I was like kind of my guard was down like sometimes I'll watch a film and I'll do too much analysis for me to enjoy it of what I think the characters would or wouldn't do but that kind of fallen by the wayside also it helped that You know, I'm constantly trying to explain to my daughter that I'm kind of a big deal, and so far unsuccessfully. We're sitting there waiting for the movie to start, and all of a sudden they just flash a huge ad for Livewire up there. Oh, look at you. My big picture. And I was like, yeah, well, anyway, hope we get out of here without the paparazzi, you know, chasing us down. Have you ever considered hiring fake paparazzi in situations like this? I've done it. It's a terrible investment. I've blown so much money on that.

Let me just tell you. I was kind of surprised. I have a camera and a broken camera And if it's fake paparazzi I can hang two cameras around my neck It doesn't matter that one of them doesn't work

Don't use the good camera on the fake snaps The fake pap snaps Not that I thought there was going to be paparazzi yesterday But I was a little bit surprised At how few people realized That I was walking around Austin with Kirsten Dunst Like I don't think of her as And she even made some self-deprecating joke at a different point in the conversation about she's like well I'm not famous enough for that but I was thinking I mean you're you were in Spider-Man you were like like you were you were in like billions of dollars of Spider-Man films like you were and and also I mean I think it's kind of cool that her career she's done work that I think appeals to all different kind of age groups and things you know and so we were down on this little kind of trail by the Colorado River here and we were chatting and I could tell that for her it was very different than being on a film set because when you're on a film set it's very controlled it's all blocked off there's not real people trying to jog past you so but of course this is journalism sort of and so the camera guy's setting up and they're going to get what we call a walk and talk it's her and I just strolling and chatting but there were so many normal people around her and jogging and there was one mother and daughter duo where the daughter was like in her kind of mid-20s and it was suspicious because they walked past us once and then they walked past us the other direction way sooner than I think their walk was over. So I think like one person figured it out but I was surprised. I mean hundreds of people went past us and nobody stopped and was like, oh are you the person from Spider-Man? Or everybody in Austin is just super cool. That was her

theory she said she and her husband and their kids like live here a lot of the time and I was like what do you like about it she's like well when I go to the Gelson's in LA to get some food for my kids I'm in sweats and I'm getting a bunch of pictures taken of me here I just live in a normal neighborhood I don't even have like you know special gated community I just live in a neighborhood with my family and we just do things and no one cares we just go get tacos like all the time at various spots she's a real taco enthusiast and uh which i was surprised i might have tacos but i'm not quite sure yet but yeah i think you're right i think i think folks in austin are just not that cowed by the whole thing which is kind of cool too can i jump in here and i'm

going to bring it back to uh paul thomas anderson here just for one second i don't know that this is more interesting in fact i know it's not but i just have to share something with you so i'm sitting here thinking i can't believe i still haven't seen the master which he made a while back but I'm a big PT or I consider myself a big PT Anderson fan I don't love all of his films but I was like have I seen all of his films except for the master so I pull up his filmography here and it looks like I have but in the back of my head I've always been like yep I still got to see that new movie the master like I you know I know that I'm behind on this but like up-and-coming actor Philip Seymour Hoffman 2012 2012 it is 10 years ago like it's 2022 now for 10 years people have been telling me I can't believe you haven't seen the master Luke if you had put me like if I had to answer that question honestly otherwise you're going to cut off a finger I would have said that movie is four years old I cannot believe it has been a messed up work dynamic yeah also what is

wrong with you honestly what is wrong with you you psychopath andrew can i can i add one more can i throw one more log on that fire of your realization that that life is moving fast and moving past you so the master is i thought a very interesting film again like most pt anderson films i don't really know why people are doing what they're doing but i'm just enjoying watching them work yeah in her advice is like that for me i just joaquin phoenix plays this kind of lost soul who is looking to find some meaning in his life and he bumps into and becomes part of this kind of a stand-in for Scientology, which is led by Philip Seymour Hoffman, who's kind of playing an L. Ron Hubbard type. And that's the movie. You know who the star of Licorice Pizza is? Cooper Hoffman, Philip Seymour Hoffman's son. Oh, wow. Wow. I didn't know that. He's great in it. It's him and one of the Haim sisters from the band Haim. In fact they're all in it The whole Hayem family is in it

I always thought it was Hayem

I did too but I think it's Hayem I could be wrong So it's Cooper Hoffman who I don't know If he's been in a lot of other things He plays this kind of hustler Like 16 year old sort of hustler kid And I think her name is Alana Hayem Plays this kind of You know woman She's a little older than him They kind of come into each other's lives and they have all these adventures, et cetera. But it's like the fact that it's Philip Seymour Hoffman's son who's starring in this film when you're referring to a movie that Philip Seymour Hoffman stars. And they're both playing essentially adults. It's not like his three-year-old son. It's on Home Alone. It's like this is a character who's doing a lot of the emotional lifting or whatever in the plot. It's just that's another little, wow, we're getting old.

Is he also – I get the impression, and I don't know why, but I get the impression that he's one of those actors who you can sort of see some of the physical characteristics of his parents in him, or in this case, of his dad in him? Is that true?

I wonder. I didn't see it a lot, but you know, other people might have a different opinion. You know who looks a lot like his father is Michael Gandolfini, who's James Gandolfini's son, and who was in The Many Saints of Newark, which was the prequel, which I didn't see, by the way.

And wasn't it Ice Cube's son who played Ice Cube in... Oh, in Boys in the Hood? No, Compton. What was the name? Was the movie called Straight Outta Compton? Straight Outta Compton, yeah, that was the movie Right, because Boys in the Hood was the movie That actually Ice Cube was in Right, but anyway, yeah

So basically we're at the point, Andrew Where all of the athletes we're watching Are the children of the athletes that we used to watch I know And all of the actors are the children of the actors we used to watch Is this how it works? Is this what Blink-182 meant when they said I guess this is growing up? I think that's exactly what they were talking about um let's see here uh one last thing maybe we'll talk public radio tomorrow maybe we'll what we'll do is we'll take the day andrew to consider if it's good for us to be weighing in on public radio departures when we actually technically work in public radio but let me just say i was reading this article over the weekend in the oregonian about these two 19 year olds that were trapped um in a like there was of course a lot of snow around the northwest and they got stuck out in kind of the wilderness, and they dug SOS. into the snow and somebody who was, I think, flying overhead saw it or the rescuers saw it and saved them, which is kind of a heartwarming story. But in reading the article, I was shocked to see that where they rescued the teenagers from was right near something called Swastika Mountain. I was surprised at how little comment there was in the Oregonian about that. It was like saying they were near Mount Hood. it was like can we get a little can we get a an asterisk or a parenthetical description of why this is still called swastika mountain but what i really thought was funny so i put a dumb tweet out that was like something to the effect of what and then a screen cap of the swastika mountain thing and what i was somebody from the oregonian kind of popped in i don't know if it was the person who wrote the article i don't have this all in front of me but somebody from the oregonian And said yeah there's kind of a crazy history to this And this is why It's because of You know basically pre-Nazi Swastika stuff and then somebody else Jumped in this was the part where I felt Although it was kind of nice because it wasn't actually a man Mansplaining to me it was somebody who Appears to be a woman explaining To me that the swastika predates the Nazis Which I'm like oh that's a shocker That's never been pointed out before

Oh okay for a second For a second I was a little distracted I didn't hear the sarcasm in your voice I'm like oh yeah

It looked like the avatar Or the whatever the photo of the person who was Hipping me to the history of the Swastika struck me as somebody who might be A little bit older than me a little bit less used to the internet A little bit less used to snark So I didn't respond to them But it was sort of like yeah we all Know everybody on this planet Pretty much at this point knows that the swastika Was a Buddhist thing that it wasn't Bad Well I thought it was Native American Oh maybe that too I mean I've heard a few versions of it but like that the swastika had of course a whole thing before the nazis co-opted it but i guess my argument is i'm sorry we've kind of you know i had a um what was it i had a hyundai excel that when they bought it had zero miles on it and ran great when i got it at 140 000 miles on it and blew up like that's what's happened to the swastika somebody put 140 000 nazi miles on it and now it's blown up i'm sure it was pristine at one point but it's not anymore why don't we

just call the mountains something else well i have two things on this maybe it's best if i don't get the second one but the first one is i went to this is so weird this is a story this is a show where i talk about two different nice cabins i've gone to in coastal maine but this is not the same one um honestly but i there was another time um that genevieve and me and her her mom and siblings i believe were visiting a family friend of theirs at their at their cabin and this was more like a like a cabin cabin, a place that you go on weekends in Maine, or maybe you spend summers there. And it was very beautiful, but, you know, smaller in a cabin. And it's the type of place that was pretty rustic. And it had like a lot of tapestries hanging, those thick, rough kind of tapestries, like hanging down. It sort of had a lofty vibe. Like there was a couple of bedrooms or one bedroom upstairs overlooking a loft. And so hanging down from the banister on this loft were a bunch of these tapestries and one of them was the swastika and like you could tell it wasn't the german swastika it was clearly like part of again i feel like a lot of these were inspired by native american imagery but don't you know what i mean like but also like but but also don't like you can explain it but it also is arresting right maybe that's the wrong take i don't know but like Also, this wasn't a Native American person. You know what I mean? Like, it was just a decoration in this white woman's, you know, second home. Like, I think you can find something to replace that with.

It just – I could have seen myself 15, 20 years ago back when I was – had a variety of regrettable – wait, we weren't doing the show 15 years ago. But I could see myself in the early days of the show thinking, well, if the swastika, you know, if the swastika was something that was meaningful in certain cultures and then the Nazis ruined it by by just taking it off the list. Now, we're rewarding the Nazis and punishing the cultures that had, you know, peaceful, loving association with it. I could see myself making that argument. Now I'm at the point where I'm just like, you know, ninety nine point nine nine percent of the people when they see a swastika are going to think of Hitler. Let's just let's just go ahead and retire that one. let's come up with something new or let's go to something else that was from the before that times

and let's embrace that like at least for us the white people who are using it just as decoration anyway you know what i mean like you're not saying to the call if this was somebody who was like no this has been you know this has been my family's symbol or my tribe symbol or whatever it is for a really long time and it has meaning that has nothing to do with with your western wars well then that's that is it different thing but as far as just using it for decoration certainly right or or naming a mountain after it like at this point like i first of all i would have never even known this mountain existed if i'm surprised that it hasn't come up i mean somebody got into the my tweets and said oh i thought maybe this was going to be part of oregon's history of you know terrible sort of racism and anti-semitism which is well documented and also very real and then it didn't seem like it was i i'm going off memory here but the explanation was something like the guy who lived near there was really into old artifacts or symbolism or something it was but it was just kind of like i don't know i mean can we do without a swastika mountain in oregon can we just go with

daffodil mountain what if it's like the yucca mountain of nazi propaganda it's just a buried pile of like ss china plates because it's still radioactive essentially so you just take it there and all of the all of the Nazi knives and Lugers and whatever else is right there and the things you put on your chest metals are all are all there I know you I know we're now I

mean unfortunately we're seamlessly segwaying into your angry Kent rant which I think is yeah

your anger is you know let's skip that that was just about some Nazi cop who got two weeks off for being a Nazi like hey great wonder why well now that's now the mayor of Kent is calling for

him to be dismissed so oh really oh yeah that's as of today remember yesterday i hadn't read up

on my kent police today yeah you actually you're ahead of me on the story that i just happened to kind of mention that i just saw that you had something about swastikas and i was like i cannot believe that this this cop in kent which is a community outside of outside of seattle had actual nazi insignias on his door and then there's some sort of you know quote-unquote internal investigation that basically says yeah he was lying when he said he didn't know uh what that

claimed that it was from the man in the high castle yeah which is the the philip k dick kind of counterfactual book and then tv show and that he had no idea it had it had negative connotations and the i think the the the people that were put in charge of investigating it found that to be not plausible they said something like if you've watched five minutes of the man in the high castle

you realize it's about nazis right and then and of course like and there were other things in his past too that made it very clear that he was interested in that culture and the thing that really galled me was now I'm just doing it but the thing that really galled me was they do this internal investigation but it states clearly that if if they can prove that he was lying then he loses his job but these cops are always just protecting each other and so they said while it's not plausible we can't prove that you were lying about it so you get a two-week suspension at least that's where it was yesterday and I was just like this is just like such a problem like these are like listen if you're an employer and you have somebody who does janitorial services for you and they do something they do that like that's still really bad but it's so much worse when you're talking about cops because they have all the power they can go out on the street right and just for any reason tell anyone that they look suspicious and then oh what you're resisting arrest like they we give them so much power and weapons and like the the fact that like the fact that we're just like okay you're a nazi but we're gonna give you like two weeks like how about we just raise the bar a little bit how about we just don't have nazis or people who who are interested in nazi culture how about we just keep them out of like you know ranked positions in the police forces maybe we could just win back just like a little bit of community trust that way it's just

not it's just not a high bar to clear well you'll be happy to to know and by happy i mean furious that when i was reading this article the first article yesterday about it i was saying that they gave me you know two weeks unpaid leave and i was like that's clearly not a proper punishment but i was like but he's gonna lose half a month of pay so that's at least something and then in the fine print it said he was also allowed to use vacation time for those two weeks so that he still got paid right he didn't even he didn't even lose his two weeks of pay he was able to just call it

vacay right yeah there you go let's do better that's my rant all right what is the perfect song

to to end this show that i think involved so many different moods and thoughts and directions how do we i have some good music that i was listening to over the break but i'm kind of i'm sort of squirreling it away for music for your weekend andrew so i haven't been helping

this week on songs and I apologize here's what I here's what I would like to do now this is a little bit risky because we're going to the um to the uh top of the hour here let's see what kicksy is playing right now if it's music let's go out with that if not you also tell me what's on tiktok radio so I can no that's off the table nope sorry I have the buttons on my end I'll bet you this is gonna be a news break though nope here it is I like dreaming by Kenny Nolan this is our outro music but it looks like we're about to hit a news break So all right, Luke. so we'll go fast.

Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. Until then, please remember no mountain too tall.

Good luck to all. And you're just not there. I like dreaming. Cause dreaming can make you mine. I like holding you close, touching your skin, even if it's in my mind. My dreams, sweet dreams, baby, I love you My sweet dreams, baby, don't keep me waiting for my life I need you, sweet dreams, baby, I love you My dreams, sweet dreams, baby, I live my dreams every night I like a dream, sweet dream baby I like a dream, yeah

I like a dream

This is AM 880 KIXI

The AM radio is a viable and modern source for news and entertainment. Totally. I used to be number one in this town, but people don't listen to AM like they used to. Seems like it's more about FM and color TV. That's stupid. It sure is, Kevin. In fact, I've got a tattoo here that fully illustrates my point. It's of this rebellious young man, and he's urinating on an FM radio. Power out.